Psychophysiological Reactions of Internet Users Exposed to Fluoride Information and Disinformation: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: False messages on the internet continually propagate possible adverse effects of fluoridated oral care products and water, despite their essential role in preventing and controlling dental caries. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to evaluate the patterns of psychophysiological reactions of adults after the consumption of internet-based fluoride-related information and disinformation. METHODS: A 2-armed, single-blinded, parallel, and randomized controlled trial will be conducted with 58 parents or caregivers of children who attend the Clinics of Pediatric Dentistry at the Bauru School of Dentistry, considering an attrition of 10% and a significance level of 5%. The participants will be randomized into test and intervention groups, being respectively exposed to fluoride-related information and disinformation presented on a computer with simultaneous monitoring of their psychophysiological reactions, including analysis of their heart rates (HRs) and 7 facial features (mouth outer, mouth corner, eye area, eyebrow activity, face area, face motion, and facial center of mass). Then, participants will respond to questions about the utility and truthfulness of content, their emotional state after the experiment, eHealth literacy, oral health knowledge, and socioeconomic characteristics. The Shapiro-Wilk and Levene tests will be used to determine the normality and homogeneity of the data, which could lead to further statistical analyses for elucidating significant differences between groups, using parametric (Student t test) or nonparametric (Mann-Whitney U test) analyses. Moreover, multiple logistic regression models will be developed to evaluate the association of distinct variables with the psychophysiological aspects. Only factors with significant Wald statistics in the simple analysis will be included in the multiple models (P<.2). Furthermore, receiver operating characteristic curve analysis will be performed to determine the accuracy of the remote HR with respect to the measured HR. For all analyses, P<.05 will be considered significant. RESULTS: From June 2022, parents and caregivers who frequent the Clinics of Pediatric Dentistry at the Bauru School of Dentistry will be invited to participate in the study and will be randomized into 1 of the 2 groups (control or intervention). Data collection is expected to be completed in December 2023. Subsequently, the authors will analyze the data and publish the findings of the clinical trial by June 2024. CONCLUSIONS: This randomized controlled trial aims to elucidate differences between psychophysiological patterns of adults exposed to true or false oral health content. This evidence may support the development of further studies and digital strategies, such as neural network models to automatically detect disinformation available on the internet. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry (RBR-7q4ymr2) U1111-1263-8227; https://tinyurl.com/2kf73t3d. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/39133.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.029 | 0.026 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.013 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.061 | 0.010 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".